


Absolution

by Seethedawn



Series: Absolution [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: AKA the Crusades, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Civilian Death, Do we tag for Major Chatacter Death?, Gore, M/M, Violence, War Crimes, anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:29:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25819615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seethedawn/pseuds/Seethedawn
Summary: The story of Nicolo di Genova; how he came to join, win, and renounce his holy crusade.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Absolution [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1887013
Comments: 14
Kudos: 148





	Absolution

**Author's Note:**

> The Crusades were terrible - please be aware the story includes disturbing themes and serious violence.
> 
> (Thank you to Leaves_of_Laurelin and Reindeersweaters for your help ♡)

The year is 1094, and Nicolò is dying. A dark miasma has gripped the town of Genoa and though the Abbey has closed itself off, their inhabitants have not been spared.

Each breath rattles his lungs, sharp shooting spikes of pain lance through his chest when the fits of coughing overtake him. The days blur. He sweats and shivers and even broth will not settle in his stomach.

On the twelfth day, the Brothers call Father Martin. He kneels by Nicolò’s side to perform Last Rights.

And so Nicolò di Genova passes from this world.

Father Martin, wearied by death this winter, is startled from his worn recital by the force of Nicolò’s sudden gasp. He sits on his straw-stuffed mat, eyes wild and wide, breathing hard, like a man running for his life. The dull sheen of fever is gone from his eyes.

“Father Martin?” he asks, confused, but otherwise his voice is as strong as any hale young man.

“Yes, my son?” responds the Father, uncertainly.

“What – what happened?”

“You have been gravely ill,” Martin explains, “but by the Lord’s Grace, now you are healed.”

Many others who survived this season of sickness experience a great weakness of breath and a long, lingering fatigue.

Nicolò eats a full portion at noontime and returns to his duties.

It is a miracle, they say. Nicolò has always been devout.

\- 

Nicolò begins to have strange dreams of two women. It takes him quite by surprise – he has not dreamed of women before.

The dreams, they do not have the texture of dreams, exactly. They feel prophetic, almost. He wakes with the urge to walk, to seek the Eastern horizon. Nicolò paces his small room in the night and worries.

After some time passes with no improvement, he goes to the Abbey's Prior for guidance.

It doesn’t sound right – he can’t make the man understand.

“Many men are tempted in their dreams,” the Prior explains, as though Nicolò is a much younger man, “we must resist sins of the flesh no matter where we encounter them.”

Nicolò does not know how to explain without revealing the truth – it is not the flesh of women by which the Devil tempts him.

“You misunderstand me,” he skirts, “these are not lustful dreams. They are unlike any dream I have had before – I cannot dismiss them as mere imaginings.”

Now the Prior seems interested, leaning in.

“Perhaps you dream of the Madonna?”

Nicolò fights the sudden urge to laugh. A vision in his mind’s eye – the flash of sharp smile, the unwomanly curves of an even sharper blade.

“No,” he says, certain, “This is not the Virgin.”

They agree the dreams are unusual and they pray for clarity.

\- 

Nicolò’s family is not wealthy, so he serves the monastery mostly by working in their fields. One strange day, inattentive after a fitful night’s pacing, Nicolò trips over a small mound in the untilled earth. He falls to the ground with a cry of pain, alerting his brothers. By the time his fellows have him on his feet his face burns with shame for his outburst – there is no pain whatsoever.

They tease him good-naturedly for some time.

{ - }

The year is 1095. A young man, apparently indigent, expelled from a nearby fiefdom for lawlessness, attempts to break into the Reliquary below the Abbey. Desperate to protect the sanctity of his home and the holy relics entombed within, Nicolò wrestles the man to the ground. A stunning pain takes his breath as the flesh of his stomach is torn by a jagged blade.

He falls to the ground, curled around himself, clutching his stomach, holding his very insides in his hands. The pain is excruciating. And then it fades.

The Abbot is summoned. Nicolò has only ever seen the man, they have never spoken. Even now, the Abbot directs his comments and questions to the Prior, instead of Nicolò directly. Nicolò admits aloud what has seemed farcical and imagined; since his miraculous recovery from illness this winter past, he has begun to notice himself somewhat immune to lasting injury.

They ask if he has tested it. He has not. Not deliberately, anyway, though he keeps the small collection of minor and extremely brief injuries to himself.

A short blade is produced, with decorative twists about the handle, Nicolò holds the blade fast, nervous of dropping such a valuable item. 

He pricks his finger, and the wound heals. After a moment, the Abbot asks him to try again – a larger cut. Nicolò sets his jaw and drags the blade along his forearm. He prays for strength and presses hard enough to reveal the white flash of bone.

The flow of blood quickly ceases, and by the time the cloud of pain has passed, the Prior wipes Nicolò’s arm clean with a swath of rough sackcloth revealing pale flesh, perfectly smooth once more.

The Abbot breaths out a prayer.

It is a blessing, indeed. Bestowed, they decide, at the time of grave illness, this ability to protect the Abbey and the saintly relics therein.

-

A scholar of some renown works in the Abbey's library. The manuscripts he copies are an enormous source of revenue for the Abbey. 

Nicolò stands in this unfamiliar room, being careful where he plants his feet, very aware that the worldly worth of the contents of this room pales only in comparison to the deeper value of such vast knowledge of the divine. He has seen books, of course, though at a distance only. To be surrounded suddenly by stacks of them is a rare gift and Nicolò is humbled by the weight of this learned man's attention.

There is an illuminated manuscript drying on the scholar's desk, shining colors like a field of flowers or the sunlight reflecting off the sea. In all his life, Nicolò has never seen it's like. 

The scholar is an older man, with a kindly disposition. He has Nicolò repeat the test, though not so deep. He holds Nicolò's arm for a moment, gently smoothing the healed skin with his thumb. 

He urges caution. His words spark a fear Nicolò has not felt since his last bout of illness. Medicinal men, the old man warns, desperate to study the human body, desecrate gravesites and exhume bodies in order to cut them apart in their quest to acquire that which God alone holds - true knowledge. They would do much worse to gain access to Nicolò's body. This miracle is a gift, yes, but one that must be kept quiet.

{ - }

The year is 1096. An emissary of the Pope visits the Gonoa with glorious news – Urban the Second has made a great speech, inciting a crusade to reclaim holy Jerusalem from pagan captivity and return it to righteous Christian stewardship.

_Jerusalem._

The idea enflames Nicolò’s very soul.

 _This._ This is what he is meant to do – the use of his miraculous healing.

The Abbot summons Nicolò to his study – the Papal emissary is honoring their Abbey with a visit. 

He has been told of Nicolò's miracle, and seeks to investigate. The Papacy is nervous of heretical miracles, and the scholar has been summoned also, to deliver his learned opinion. 

Shocked to find himself in company such as this, Nicolò obligingly tears a long rend along the line of his leg. As ever, the skin quickly clears.

The emissary sits forward, now eyeing Nicolò with true, keen interest. 

“What if you cut it off? A finger, say? Does it regrow?”

Startled, Nicolò rears back, suddenly afraid.

“It is not for man to test that which is gifted by God,” says the scholar, quickly. 

The Abbot agrees and so the emisary acquiesces, but his eyes linger on the bloodied blade. Once dismissed, Nicolò flees the chamber, and does not take meals in the hall that day or the next. He skips Lauds next dawn and finds out from one of his brothers that the emissary has moved on.

-

Many who wish to join the holy crusade are walking to Constantinople. Nicolò, however, is Genoese, and his people do not need to walk from one costal city to the next. 

Nicolò sails from Genoa along with a band of other non-mercenary crusaders who have come together in the city. They have taken up a collection and chartered a ship. Many of the group are locals, and a handful of these men Nicolò knows personally. 

Nicolò enjoys the trip immensely, he meets new people who bolster his enthusiasm and forges friendships and each league the ship sails East is the furthest Nicolò has been from his home. 

He dreams still. Two women, warriors themselves, either in the eastern deserts or the African ones to the south, he guesses. It is easier, now that he is filled with Godly purpose, to disregard their siren call. 

-

The crusaders, the Pope has proclaimed, are absolved of their earthly sins. All who answer the call to this holy cause have gained entrance to Heaven. 

Nicolò has wondered about this. Never blasphemous in his questioning, but pondering. 

A retinue of women follow the crusaders south out of Constantinople - women who accept coin for company. The men who visit with them do not seek penance, afterall, they are forgiven by the act of crusading. 

This does not align with Nicolò's memories of the teachings at the Abbey. 

It is a sign, he decides, of the importance of their rescue of Jerusalem.

{ - }

The year is 1097, and on the battlefield outside Nicea, Nicolò falls, one of many lanced in a hail of arrows.

Below the shock of pain, Nicolò is surprised; he feels himself dying, too fast for even his body to heal. 

Nicea surrenders to the glory of their great army, and Nicolò rises anew.

Saracen blood is indistinguishable from that of a Christian, so when Nicolò returns to camp his fellows assume it is the blood of the vanquished that stains his leathers.

The company marches inland, Nicolò slowly develops a trial-and-error style of fighting. He slays his first Saracen. And then his second. And he begins to grow easy with killing.

-

In the battle of Doryleum, Nicolò saves the life of a prominent knight who fights under the colors of a Frankish lord. He has become separated in the chaos from his retinue, and set upon by Saracens. 

Nicolò has picked up some French by now, and the knight's Italian is passable, so they can communicate well enough for battle purposes. 

After the Turkish camp burns and their forces scatter, the crusading army celebrates. The knight tells tale of Nicolò's actions, how he is untrained but ferocious, how he fights with total disregard for his own self, taken over by faith in the cause. 

The group turns to Nicolò for some accounting of his actions. Overwhelmed, Nicolò says only "I put my fate in the the hands of Our Lord." 

It is no lie, after all. 

The small Genoese group with whom Nicolò began this trek have all perished or turned back, so he is taken in by this group of Franks. For the first time, he is issued a true crusading longsword and chainmail. During off times, he trains with the squires. 

By the time the army lays siege to the ancient walled city of Antioch, Nicolò has gained real skill with this blade, and a fresh well of opportunities to practice. If he misjudges a dodge or parry he pays a painful price, but not a permanent one. 

There is a randomness to battle, certainly, men of great skill are slain, but slowly, Nicolò begins to survive each day by merit of his own ability. 

{ - }

The year is 1098, and the walls of Antioch are unrelenting. Nicolò knows, now, how the crusaders can be forgiven any sin. 

If God has promised to grant them access to Heaven no matter what mortal sins are committed, it is only due to their immense suffering here on earth. 

While their forces surround Antioch, they must at the same time fight off enemy armies summoned to rescue the besieged city from their chokehold. The fighting is constant and it lasts many months. 

Their food supplies are low - always. Their access to water is fraught. They have marched in heavy mail across barren deserts in immense heat. At times, it seems more men die of hunger than by blade. Disease takes many. Each skirmish claims it's share of lives, but the days following when the stench of death rots the camp and the delirious moaning of the injured swells up, their wounds turning black and festering, deep ditches are dug and high pyres are lit. 

The horrors he has seen - some days when Nicolò wakes healed and whole among the dead on a field of battle, he lies with his eyes closed and tries to block out the sounds of death and dying around him, and he prays to be released, wishes he was not blocked from accessing his glorious eternal reward. 

The sense that Nicolò has been blessed begins to fracture. 

-

For the first time, Nicolò dreams of a man. A Saracen, Nicolò can tell clearly enough by his darkened skin and hair and his foreign manner of dress. The man is scared, confused, alone. He has brown eyes.

One day, Nicolò meets this man in battle, recognizing his face as if they were long-known to each other. The Saracen man recovers from his shock more quickly, and Nicolò dies for the first time at his blade. The next time they meet, Nicolò is the victor, and for the first time he watches a dead man rise. 

He has been dreaming of the same two wild women for a very long time. But suddenly these dreams burn anew - if the brown eyed man is real, if he is the same as Nicolò... the women are real as well? They are in the same way blessed?

It becomes Nicolò's mission in battle each time their armies meet - find the Saracen. None of Nicolò's brethren have a hope of defeating this man - only Nicolò is fairly matched. 

The Saracen's skill in battle grows each day as Nicolò's did. Nicolò does not always find him. But he begins to feel that the other man is seeking him out too. 

He cannot speak of the matter to anyone, but he spends many hours on the problem of the Saracen man's apparent blessing. How can he be favored by God as Nicolò is? 

Nicolò concludes that the Saracen has done dark magic of some kind, he is a coward protecting himself, or perhaps a selfish man seeking renown and glory. Nicolò is God's divine answer to such an abomination. 

And Nicolò vows that he will meet this man each day until their Judgment comes, if that is what it takes.

When they meet under the sun, the Saracen snarls, when the clash of their swords brings them in close, those brown eyes are sharp with rage. 

When they meet at night, under cover of dreams... a heavy sadness and deep fatigue. Sometimes the Saracen even weeps. 

Nicolò wonders if this man dreams of Nicolò. What he thinks of Nicolò's own moments of weeping.

-

When Nicolò awakes, the Saracen who does not stay dead is sitting next to him on the abandoned field of battle.

He says something in his language, Nicolò does not understand it.

It takes him longer than he expected to be able to sit up. He remembers the blade slicing downward, crossways from neck toward his navel.

“Yusuf Al-Kaysani," repeats the strange bearded man.

Nicolò blinks. He doesn’t know what this man is doing here, lingering, or why he bothers speaking in his foreign tounge when Nicolò plainly does not understand.

The man taps his blood-splattered chest twice and repeats, slowly.

“Yusuf.”

Ah.

“Nicolò,” he replies, ingrained reaction more than a desire to share.

They part ways, not in peace, but in acknowledgement. They will meet in battle again, and Nicolò will need to fight harder. 

Many weeks pass. Again and again Yusuf appears among Saracen forces. Again and again, Nicolò's people rebuff them. 

They get word of yet another army marching to Antioch's rescue, larger than any they have faced yet. Their forces are in truly dire peril - if they cannot breach the city, this will be their end. 

It is this desperate relief, Nicolò believes, that leads to such slaughter inside the city. The euphoric blood fever takes him - until the moment he turns down a narrow, winding stone street, sword at the ready, and spears an elderly woman as she hurries for safety. 

She looks surprised. Indignant, almost, before pain twists her wrinkled features. She speaks a few gasping words as she crumples onto the cobblestone street. 

Crusaders rush past them squeezing down ancient streets. Nicolò stands still, shaken, shocked. 

He is not naive - he isn't the worst fate to befall a woman as her city is sacked. But, all the same, he will face no reprimand for this thoughtlessly cruel deed. God has forgiven him all his worldly sins, Nicolò crusades in His name, after all. 

-

Antioch falls quiet. Nicolò washes himself in a basin in an unfamiliar house. Saracens decorate their homes with a delicate pattern that he discovers to be writing. The colors are bright and the lettering shimmers when the light catches. It is beautiful - like the stained glass high up in his old Abbey. 

There are books in this home, in the same unfamiliar script, more freely available here, it seems, than decorated manuscripts were in Genoa. 

Clothes, he finds too. Some small enough to fit a child. He doesn't know where this child is now. He does not dwell on the matter. 

It is unsettling, later on, to learn that Antioch only fell due to treachery from within - though, Nicolò supposes, such is the nature of the Saracen people. 

The famous hermit Peter, digging in the rubble of the conquered city, finds an ancient metal spear. A vision comes to him proclaiming this is the very same spear which pierced Jesus's side as he lay dead upon that fateful cross. The very same cross which is now emblazoned across the banner under which Niccolo fights. 

It is a sign, and Nicolò takes heart. God approves of their work, he blesses their success. Nicolò himself is further quiet proof. 

It is impossible to wage war without some innocent casualty. Nicolò must trust in the Will of his Lord. He will not fall into doubt. 

-

Their armies do not leave Antioch with the same speed they did Nicea. The necessity of rest is obvious - their force and strength is much depleted by their long assault, but the months stretch on, listlessly. The people here are terrified by the occupying army, while the noble houses argue amongst themselves for titles and land and riches. 

Nicolò grows restless in his hollow, stolen house. He dreams of two women, their odd routines have become soothing to him over time, and his feet itch with an old urge - find them. 

Worse, are his dreams of Yusuf. The man lives - traveling, from what Nicolò can make out, among the surviving members of the bested army. For the first time, Nicolò sees Yusuf at rest, among fellows. He sits up by the hearth late into the night and captivates his audience with tales in a language Nicolò cannot understand. His face is alight with expression, his eyes for once, burning bright with enthusiasm and a tinge of joy. Months pass, winter comes and goes, and Nicolò dreams of this man with brown eyes, a hearty laugh, and a soothing voice. 

Nicolò lends his voice to the growing group of agitators - it is long past time to advance on Jerusalem. They should not linger, dragging out their holy quest. Let the deed be done. 

{ - } 

The year is 1099, and Jerusalem is long warned of their approach. Advance scouts tell them that every day loyal Saracen swords pour into the city. 

The city itself is sacred, holy as any relic. Nicolò knows that its defenders will fight to the bitter end to keep their claim. He would, if their positions were reversed.

Their army walks through the night under a full moon - an encouraging sign of God's favor, and sights the city just after dawn. 

Jerusalem is a great city indeed, so large that their reduced numbers can barely encircle it. 

The weeping, ecstatic joy that overtook many men at the sight of this holy city quickly passes into despair. 

They will not be able to sustain such a prolonged siege as Antioch. Aware of the crusader's intentions, the city has stockpiled food and poisoned every well for leagues around. Emptied Antioch behind them is again besieged - no help or supplies are coming from that quarter. 

Raggedly they throw themselves upon the walls. They are rebuffed like a wave upon a stone harbor. Waves, of course, can take stone, but only in time. 

Their army has no time. 

Food has been scarce, water scarcer, and the high heat of the desert is beyond anything he has seen even in Genoan summers. 

Those less fortunate, with no rank or distinguishment or coin, fight amongst themselves for access to mouthfuls of cloudy stagnant water. Nicolò prays to God in thanks and no small guilt – he truly believes he would have died of thirst if he were not as he is. Hunger takes many. They are quickly burying more of their own than they are claiming Saracen lives. 

A holy man proclaims a vision - it is the will of God that the crusaders fast for three days, and then circle the city barefoot. If they do this, according to the vision, the great city shall fall. 

Nicolò, for the first time in his life, doubts. 

An order to fast? The army is starving already. Many who might have been saved will be pushed over the brink in the course of three days. And then - to walk this great trek? In the heat so intense the air seems to shimmer like water? 

His gut clenches, it is a treacherous, blasphemous thought even in the private depths of his own mind. 

_They need us to_ choose _not to eat._

But as it is proclaimed, the people fast, many die, many more collapse into the sand, and the Saracens gather on the walls and jeer. 

There are speeches and trumpets and psalms and the starving, thirsty people are whipped into a fervorous frenzy. 

Nicolò fasts and marches and prays alike, certainly, but all the same he feels disconnected, out of step. Perhaps because his feet are healed with each step. Perhaps because his body does not succumb to the madness of hunger and thirst. Perhaps because he dreams of a man inside the walls. Perhaps because a new gnawing worry has breached the defenses of his mind - the women warriors who have kept him company so long - do they see Nicolò at night? Do they pass judgment on his actions where his own God turns away? 

He hears the very same Peter the Hermit deliver a great speech on the Godliness of their current suffering, how they are sowing rewards they will reap in Heaven. Nicolò remembers the Spear at Antioch. How well-timed that discovery was, such a balm after a long, grueling siege. 

He learns later that news has reached their camp - ships docked at nearby Jaffa. Supplies and reinforcements have come. 

-

The ships at Jaffa are of Genoa and many men are dispatched to secure the supplies they bring. Nicolò goes too - he has proven himself capable enough to be selected as part of this elite escort, and he is tired of high walls and wide desert horizons. 

The sight of ships in the great harbors of Genoa once filled Nicolò with love and pride and joy. 

He sets eyes upon a familiar scene as they crest the hill over Jaffa - the galleys, the sails, the colors, the sea salt smell, but the swell of emotion does not come. 

Genoan brothers here to finally end this long crusade - why, then does he dread? 

The great ships are dismantled, plank by plank. In lands as barren as these, wood and nails will feed their cause as well as water and meat. 

The Saracens send a large, ferocious force to block this much needed flow of supplies. Nicolò thinks of the starving, sickly madness that can be halted by the safe passage of these provisions and he fights to many deaths in their defense. 

He knows the Saracen men probably have similar thoughts within their hearts. 

The desperate strength of Nicolò's people prevails - the wood and the water arrive at the base of the besieged walls. 

At night, Yusuf's people have ceased their song-singing. 

There are forces here beyond Nicolò - God wills that the city be taken. It is the arrogance of the Saracens that they risk their people's lives in defiance of that ordained Will. 

What will happen when they breech... is not Nicolò's to control. 

-

Nicolò thinks of the kindly scholar at the old Abbey. One kind of learned man, perhaps softened by age, or long exposure to the loving word of God.

He watches as a different, more vicious knowledge is applied to the wooden beams that once sailed proud upon glorious seas. Great wheeled towers are erected, deep ditches become long ramps of dirt. Siege engines - fresh tools of war which will overcome the ancient strength of even these stone walls.

-

The Saracens hurl clay pots which explode into flame - Greek fire. The towers are packed full of men, and the sound - the awful rending screams of those men trapped inside. Some escape, as Nicolò watches, but it is only a very small number. 

They can spare no water to douse the flames. 

The nobles order the wreckage to be searched - any useable beams will be remade. They mean to try again. 

-

The strong bonds of fellowship Nicolò has felt with his crusading brothers begins to fray. 

It has been a slow change and hard to describe even in his own mind. His fellows begin to seem averse to him. They have withered under the sun and their bloody wounds have turned to mottled scarring and Nicolò does not match. One man remarks in surprise that Nicolò still has all his teeth.

His prowess in battle is no longer the subject of jokes; the many nights of mirth over what a wastage Italian monasteries must be, if the likes of Nicolò reside there, are long past. Now it is whispers behind his back, scared, wondering eyes follow him about the encampment. 

At the same time, especially as fresh reinforcements arrive, Nicolò begins to see them as charges, rather than fellows. He is himself ordained by God to protect these people, to further this holy cause. But he does not befriend them any more. He does not wish to sit alongside them at camp and hear of the beauty of their wives or their humorous childhood misadventures - it makes it easier to notice their absence. 

-

So, when after only two months the great city walls finally - God be praised _finally_ \- acquiesce, Nicolò is overjoyed. His people will survive the summer, the city will share it’s spoils, they will have water and food and promised riches and eternal glory.

He will not be left, the last man standing, alone in this distant desert, to light the final pyre. 

He is even prepared, he thinks, for what will happen once the army pierces the walls. The cost which must be exacted to cleanse the city of it's too-comfortable captors. 

The days that follow become a nightmare of unendurable shade.

The defending armies have fallen back, he hears, to the more defensible holy sites upon the high hill. 

Still, Nicolò watches as men whose lives he himself has saved, move from door to door, executing families as they cower in their own homes. It is slaughter unlike anything Nicolò has known.

Nicolò throws open a door and sees a woman, cowering in the corner of the small stone room. There are two sets of small feet huddled behind her, pressed into the corner, and she holds aloft a makeshift pointed wooden spear - the broken-off spindle from a household loom. She is bleeding already from a cut along her chin and her shawls are in disarray, he can see her hair. 

"Empty," he calls, and slams the door shut. 

A sin of course, to lie. But Nicolò is a crusader and his God has forgiven him for much weightier crimes than deception. 

That night, the news comes of a surrender, there is no more army to fight, only terrified people, struggling in futility to preserve themselves. Still, it goes on, ceaselessly. 

Nicolò finds himself hiding in a house, empty but for a pile of leaking corpses in the adjoining room. He sits against the wall next to a puddle of his own bile. He had promised himself he would get back up - he was only going to rest, to escape, for a moment. 

It has been some time, now. 

The door bursts open, startling him, and a young boy freezes just across the threshold, horror and resignation at the mere sight of Nicolò, pitiful though he is. 

Nicolò used to get along well with the young ones who worked the fields in Genoa. He sometimes carried them on his shoulders and twirled while they laughed in the sunshine. 

The boy is pursued - two Germanic men follow and seize the boy by his shoulder, staying the fall of their blade only at the sight of Nicolò. 

"What are you doing? Cowardly dog - get back out there!" 

Nicolò sighs, uses the tip of his longsword to leverage himself back to his feet. He feels the weight of all his many deaths - true bone-deep fatigue. 

The men are surprised when he kills them. As the second one falls, Nicolò wonders distantly - he is a crusader, he has captured Jerusalem, is he still forgiven? 

Was he ever?

"Mosque," he says, to the boy, one of very few words he has bothered to learn in the language of this land. The child takes off at a run. 

He finds himself urging people to the potential safe harbour of their temples. He sees the glittering domes and piercing tall towers rising over the skyline and that way he points. He remembers Antioch, any survivors will be collected in their houses of worship and ransomed back to their people.

He wades through gore in the narrow, lifeless streets and eventually comes to what is obviously a great temple. As he expected it has been surrounded, clearly filled with those seeking shelter from the invaders.

He hears the Frankish commanders talking – they are going to burn the temple.

_They are going to burn the temple._

Too long the city has been held by infidels, they proclaim, a cleansing of all those who defile this holy place - by fire where necessary.

Some of those inside the building know Latin, French, Italian. They are screaming, begging. There are women in there, children. _Sanctuary_ , one pleads in desperate Latin, _Sanctuary_.

Nicolò is a solider, but first he was a holy man. A place of worship is holy ground, and these people claim Sanctuary. If God wishes, he may revoke his Word and Nicolò will be struck down.

He draws his sword to defend these people.

He kills a few surprised soldiers before he is lamed. They do not strike to kill him, which might have given him an advantage, instead he is dragged on bloody legs toward the building. 

The doors are opened just enough to thrust Nicolò inside. The mass of people pressed against the door try in vain to push through to freedom – one falls away with a great bleeding gash in his side from a thrashing sword. The door closes with a heavy, solid thud, and the sounds of barriers going up recommences.

The crowd, desperate and enraged, falls upon Nicolò in his obvious crusader’s garb, and he is quickly overcome and killed.

And so ends the life of Nicolò di Genova, who, blessed by God, left his monastery to crusade in the Holy Lands.

He wakes coughing, a dry burning smoke in his throat, stinging his eyes and obscuring his vision. The roar of the fire is not enough to cover the wailing, bright flames dance, blurred by ash and heat and moisture. The awful smell of a funerary pyre mixed with burning, burning, burning.

Hell, he thinks. His people have come to this place where the only son of God once walked and they have brought with them Hell on Earth.

An urgent fear in the face of intense heat gives him renewed strength. He wrestles with his garb and mail - he dreads to wake with steel ringlets melted onto his skin. 

As he tears away the blood-soaked trappings of a crusader, the fire encroaches - a purifying penance. 

Death takes Nicolò once more, with all the excruciating pain he deserves.

-

The city is quiet and still when Nicolò wakes. He does not know how long he was gone, only that there is no longer a whole building around him, and the ash and burned debris have cooled.

He finds the will only to drag himself away from the wreckage, tucking himself into a some abandoned corner before collapsing, utterly spent. When rest finally takes him, familiar brown eyes weep no more. A dead stare broken by slow uneven blinking.

He hopes Yusuf did not dream of the fire.

-

It is not hard to find bloody clothing off of a body in the street nearby. It has not been long enough for the rot to set in, though Nicolò does not fear disease. The streets are quiet, here at least. He can hear it in the distance - revelry, now, rather than battle. The only way to calm an army that has wrought destruction such as this upon a city is to turn them from death to drink. 

He doesn't know what drives him deeper into the city, into a tavern full of the beastly victorious, rather than out into the desert. Purposelessness? Apathy? Thirst? 

He hears the tale of a Saracen soldier, not up on the hill with the others, but blocking the door to a small neighborhood mosque. He fought fiercely, but was slain, only to reveal himself as a Devil taken the form of a man. He woke, even from death, many times before his capture. He is now restrained and being sent to Rome.

Yusuf. It can only be.

He speaks for the first time, asking a single question of the storyteller. 

"Do they take him by land or by sea?" 

By land, is the answer. They do not dare risk their prisoner calling up an unnatural storm. 

Nicolò thanks the man, drains his cup, and stands. 

He remembers a long ago fear, laughably minor, in light of the years since - an emissary of the Pope, dampening his eagerness to test the furthest boundaries Nicolò's apparent blessing. 

No, Nicolò decides. Yusuf will not be delivered to the mercies of the Vatican.

-

It takes him some days to catch up with the convoy. He makes a rough count of fifty men, and in the middle of the procession, Yusuf, caged like some kind of mad beast. It takes several nights and a fair few deaths to get to Yusuf, but by the time the iron cage falls open, there are none left to object.

Nicolò drops his weapon and steps away. He sinks to his knees in supplication, waiting.

Yusuf, he believes, will strike him down, justly, in light of the evil Nicolò has wrought, and this will be Nicolò's final fall. He will not rise after Yusuf's judgment - no, he will burn once more, eternal. 

He hears the other man dismount the wheeled cage. Instead of taking up Nicolò’s discarded weapon, though, he falls to his knees as well, matching Nicolò but for a few inches in height. Surprised, Nicolò looks up. Yusuf catches him with manacled hands, one curling around the back of Nicolò’s neck and pulling him forward so they can press their sweat-slicked foreheads together.

Absolution runs through Nicolò like a shudder and to his horror, he feels that he has begun to sob wretchedly.

“Yusuf,” he gasps, clutching tight to the tattered and stained remains of a cloth shirt.

“Nicolò,” Yusuf breathes back.

He says more, it has the cadence of a prayer. Nicolò vows to learn this language. He thinks, now, that there will be time.

**Author's Note:**

> So a few years ago I got my degree in Medieval Europe and people were like "what are you gonna do with that?"  
> Anyway - history rant!
> 
> 1.) The implied canon meeting for Nicolo and Yusuf doesn't make a ton of sense to me, historically. We are supposed to believe that they met in 1099 when they both discovered themselves immortal at the siege of Jerusalem. But the battle of Jerusalem only lasted June-July, which, for a medieval seige, isn't very long.  
> Plus, while the massacre that followed was shocking even by the standards of the time, the Crusaders themselves still perpetrated it and it was onlookers who recorded and spread the story who were horrified.  
> So, if you work backwards from the assumption that Nicky did not actively participate in the 1099 sack of Jerusalem (which I choose to believe), then he hasn't had much time since meeting Yusuf to have had any kind of change of heart.  
> Antioch, on the other hand, was an eight month seige, with frequent, bloody battles as Muslim armies tried to break the Crusader's grip on the city. If they met at Antioch, they could fight on and off for months, dreaming of each other all the while.  
> After Antioch, the Crusaders stayed in the city for about a year - which gives Nicky the time to reflect, to continue dreaming, and to see a slice of life in the Muslim world. Then, the comparatively brief and shockingly violent siege of Jerusalem finally shatters his world view and he turns his back on everything he used to represent.  
> Thank you for coming to my TedTalk - Yusuf and Nicolo met in 1097/1098 at Antioch. 
> 
> 2.) Historically it is disputed if the crusaders actually burned a synagogue filled with people. A contemporary-ish Muslim account said that the Jewish people of the city had gone to their temple to prepare for death and that the crusaders burned it down over the heads. But a Jewish source mentions the temple being burned but does not say that any people were inside. My early medieval professor told the story where they did burn the temple with people inside and it has always stuck with me, so I chose to include it here, even though there is evidence otherwise.  
> 3.) There were actually a pair of Genoese ships that basically saved(?) the day at Jerusalem. A few hundred Genoese men joined the siege, but Nicolo joining the Crusade that late negates everything I already argued about Antioch, so I have electively ignored this possibility.  
> 4.) I am aware that my use of Crusader as an identifier for Nicolo is probably anachronistic. He would certainly have been willing to describe himself as being on a crusade, but he would have been unlikely to think of himself and the thousands of others with him as Crusaders collectively. It is much more likely they would have thought of themselves by their feudal liege alliance, or more broadly as Franks or Lombards, but I'm lazy and "Crusaders" makes the point.
> 
> Besides these points, I do believe I have been able to fit Nicolo into a fairly accurate account of the First Crusade. Poor baby ♡
> 
> Thank you for reading! I'm on Tumblr @Seethedawn if you like :)


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